The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1887-01-14
The Neva.

A mere neck of earth separates the
Russian capital from the great inland
sea Of Ladoga, and through more than
forty intervening versts of forest land,
green and wavy with the trembling as
pen, the birch, the alder, and the silver
pine. the Neva moves majestically down
its deep channel, by villages and clear
Ings, past scattered communes and
struggling huts, between sounding
wood-yards and busy factories, till at
last gliding along the famed granite
quays of the imperial city, it pours by
five broad mouths and narrow outlets
innumerable into the Gulf of Finland.
No Russian river has the beauty, the
purity, the picturesqueness, which are
the attributes of this northern water
course; yet to fully appreciate the noble
ness of its aspect in the warm season,
one must be familiar with its wintry ap-
pearance, and above all witness its
vernal emancipation from the letters of
frost by ukase of the father of
warmth" the Slav Apollo. Dazh-Bog
himself. For nearly six months a ring
ing highway for man and beast, the
Neva grows unsafe for travel late in the
month of April, and has usually re-
sumed its freedom by the beginning of
May; yet the opening Of the attack on
the crystalline mass precedes the mo-
ment of its melting by weeks. A month
sometimes elapses before the solar rays
have begun to sensibly thin the ice
crust, and for a month of seeming def
ance of the forces of renaissance
droskies pursue their chosen paths over
the CONCEALED river, pedestrians con-
tinue to traverse it in chair slides or on
foot, the heavy wagons of merchant
and trader go rumbling over in the
same endless procession. and the Samo-
yeds, those gypsies of the north, cling
with their RENDERS to the camping
ground of their winter exile on the
frozen stream, which is soon to bear
them back to their homes in the Arctic
circle.
The metamorphosis then follows with
swiftness truly Russian. The last
screws and clasps of molecular cohesion
are drawn in single night; the thick
est ice-plate then opens to its solar enc
my thousand lines of march. In the
morning, with firm, quick steps, you
may safely traverse the Neva, still ice
covered; at noon, your return is barred
by clear, swelling stream, whose
whilom bonds have turned to dancing
liquid facets, from which the sun laughs
back its light and its triumph. True,
the ice is not yet wholly gone, but it
1t meets the eye henceforth purely as q
spectacle, the offering not of river,
but of lake. This new ice is the pro-
duct of more northern waters, the
snowy blocks and bergs of Ladoga,
glittering debris of an unequal combat
that every spring renews. For some
days after the breakup along the Neva,
in the interval between the beginning
of open and that of safe navigation, the
river channel is thronged with broken
strata. cleft blocks, truncated pillars,
shivered columns; with spires and
spears and shafts; nay. with all shape
full and shapeless masses. that half
undergo and half escape degelation in
the annual return of heat to the far
north. Slowly the rank and file of this
shining host glide past, driving back to
shelter fleet of venturesome ferry
boats, battering the bridge piers with
dangerous force and frequency. scraping
the quays with a sonorous attrition,
and emitting throughout the duration
of their passage a strange rustling,
crunching sound. BY day striking by
night solemn and weird, this scene
passes in its turn, and for six months
the Neva presents the aspect which !
have described in the opening para
graph.-Ednu,sd Noble, IN atlantic
Monthly